by Louise Welsh
‘You’re a good dad. You wouldn’t be here now if you weren’t.’
His face was turned away from Stevie, looking out at the piles of cars.
‘My father used to beat me. Not badly and never for no reason. He was brought up to believe that boys needed discipline. I loved him, but there were times when I hated him too. I swore that if I had children I’d never raise a hand to them. Maybe if I had …’ He faltered. ‘… maybe if I’d set firmer limits …’
Stevie remembered Shuggie as she had last seen him: sulky and half-drunk, sitting at the Stromness Hotel bar at the Easter celebrations, waiting for Willow to arrive. Magnus had been sulky and drunk that night too, because of something to do with the boy. She said, ‘Did you rebel when you were Shug’s age?’
Magnus leaned his head against the passenger window and looked at Stevie.
‘I got a motorbike when I was sixteen and drove it full pelt, the length of the main island. My poor mother thought I was going to come home in a body bag – several body bags. How about you? Were you a problem teen?’
‘No one ever hit me, but I got tired of being the only mixed-race girl in a small town. People kept telling me I could be a model, so I packed my bags and headed for London when I was seventeen. I guess that was my act of rebellion.’
Magnus had never asked Stevie about her life before the Sweats. He said, ‘How did that work out?’
She smiled. ‘There were lots of pretty girls in London, more exotic than I was. I didn’t become a model, but I made a life.’
‘I guess that’s what we’ve all been trying to do since the Sweats, make a life.’ Magnus looked away again. ‘I keep thinking of poor Adil. He was a good lad and they killed him just for being in the wrong place.’ He let out a long, juddering sigh. ‘I don’t care who killed Bjarne and Candice any more. I just want to find Shug, Willow and little Evie and bring them home.’
Stevie measured her words. ‘I want to find them too, but we won’t have a home worth the name, if we don’t try to get justice for Candice and Bjarne.’
Magnus’s voice had a bitter twist. ‘Candice was a poor, put-upon soul who didn’t deserve to die. But Bjarne was a shit. It’s a miracle no one gave him what he deserved sooner. If somebody had, perhaps poor Candice would still be alive.’
Stevie steered the Humvee slowly along the narrow stretch of cleared motorway, careful not to graze against the scrapyard of abandoned cars, piled high in the lane beside her.
‘Is that the kind of place you’d want to live? Somewhere anyone can murder people they dislike and get away with it?’
The motorway bent into a long curve designed to slow speeding traffic. The piles of abandoned cars stretched on, blocking their view of the road beyond.
Magnus said, ‘You killed three men in Eden Glen, but I don’t see you volunteering for a trial. Christ, you put a gun to a baby’s head at Scrabster. I’m guessing that used to be considered against the law.’
The Humvee edged to the left and scraped against an articulated lorry. There was a screech of metal on metal, but the armoured vehicle held steady. Stevie swore beneath her breath and touched the brakes.
‘Eden Glen is lawless. That’s why those men felt free to try and rape me.’ She sensed contradictions in her argument, but pressed on. ‘If the district had a rule of law, I’d step before its court and accept its judgement.’
Stevie didn’t mention baby Mercy. She felt ashamed of the way she had put the gun to the child’s head and held it hostage.
Magnus let out another sigh. ‘You say that, Stevie. You probably even believe it, but I know you. You’re always convinced you’re on the side of right.’
She was about to remind Magnus that he had vouched for Belle and the men with her, but the curve they had been travelling on straightened out and the view was clearer. The roadblock she had been half-hoping for, half-dreading, waited up ahead. Stevie slowed the car. She saw Magnus slip the hammer into his pocket and knew his hand would stay wrapped around its handle, ready to strike.
Forty
The blockade was different from the ones they had encountered in Dounthrapple. Three men and a woman, wearing black sports gear beneath high-vis jackets, waited by a barrier that spanned the motorway’s free lane. They each cradled semi-automatic rifles of the kind issued to the armed police who had haunted airports and large railway stations in the years before the Sweats. A sign was fixed to the barrier. Magnus read the words painted across it out loud: ‘Glasgow Smiles Better.’ Mr Happy, a grinning, yellow ball of a figure, equipped with stumpy arms and legs, was painted next to the slogan.
The female border guard held up a hand and stepped into the middle of the road, confident of her power to halt their progress. Her rifle rested against her large chest. Her face was soft and pleasant; worn by familiar marks of suffering. Stevie stopped the Humvee and rolled her window down a couple of inches.
The guard’s lips were frosted with pink lipstick. Her smile was warm, her hands steady against the metal of her gun. She looked somewhere in her late forties, but it had grown hard to age people since the Sweats.
‘Welcome to Glasgow.’ In the streets beyond, tenements were blackened and derelict, but there was no irony in the woman’s voice. She glanced behind her at the three men, still clustered around the barrier. ‘Am I on my own here?’
The guards looked at each other with affected nonchalance. The tallest of them gave the man on his left a not so gentle shove. The man muttered something that might have been piss off, but he picked up a clipboard from the bonnet of a car and sauntered towards the Humvee, hips pitching an unconvincing swagger, eyes lowered. Stevie sensed Magnus’s grip tightening on the handle of the stolen hammer.
‘Thank you, Billy.’ The woman rolled her eyes at Stevie. ‘You’d think these boys would be keen to meet new folk, but they’re the laziest set of fearties I’ve met. They’re scared you’re going to gun them down, but they cannie be bothered to run away.’ She put a hand on Billy’s arm and pulled him closer to the Hummer. ‘See Billy, it’s only a nice, young couple come to help with the clean-up.’
Billy looked in his early thirties, broad-shouldered and ruddy from outdoor work.
‘Piss off, Maureen.’ His voice was free of rancour. He nodded to Stevie. ‘Are yous healthy?’
Stevie gave him one of her best salesgirl smiles. ‘Yes, we’re both well.’
Billy’s cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced two glass thermometers.
‘Stick these under your oxters please, next to the skin.’
Stevie slid her hand down the neck of her shirt and pressed the thermometer in her armpit. The glass was cold against her flesh. A musky, unwashed scent rose from inside her clothes.
‘Is the city free of the Sweats?’
Billy shrugged. ‘Seems so. For now, anyway. There was an outbreak last year, but they caught it quick and isolated the folks that had it, poor buggers.’
‘It was a false alarm if you ask me.’ Maureen crossed herself. ‘Not like the first waves, folk falling down dead in the street with no warning, kids coming home from school and finding their parents had passed away.’
Billy pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
‘People still died, Maureen. You wouldn’t be calling it a false alarm if it was you who was deid.’ Billy held out his hand for the thermometers. Stevie and Magnus passed them over. He glanced at the mercury scale. ‘Aye, yous’re fine.’ Billy lowered his eyes to the clipboard and made a note. ‘Where have yous come from?’
‘Orkney.’
‘Orkney.’ Maureen repeated the name. Her smile was wistful. Stevie thought she was going to tell them that she had holidayed on the islands before the Sweats, but she simply said, ‘A long way.’
Magnus leant across Stevie. He pressed a button on the driver’s side door, scrolled the window down further and flashed the woman a grin. A breeze carried the smell of a distant fire from somewhere down below the motorway. W
ood smoke filtered through a chemical tang that reminded him of London burning.
‘Anyone else from our neck of the woods passed through?’
Billy gave Magnus an apologetic look. ‘We’re not meant to share details of comings and goings. People post photos and contact details in George Square if they want to be found. You can check there, once you’re registered.’
Maureen nodded. ‘Once we’ve got your details, the boys will take you to the corpo offices. Someone will sign you up and find out what your skills are. They’ll assign you a job and a billet. You can check the notices after.’
Stevie looked at Billy. ‘What do you mean, if they want to be found?’
The guard shrugged. ‘There’s been trouble. Folk beaten up …’ He stared across the interconnecting roads towards a bridge curving through the air; testament to a lost civilisation. ‘… killed.’
Maureen’s smile was tight. ‘Some people come to the city to get away from bad decisions they made after the Sweats … men they hooked up with …’ She gave Magnus an apologetic look. ‘… or women. You remember how it was.’ Stevie sensed a personal story behind Maureen’s upside-down smile. She said, ‘People were confused, looking for comfort.’
Magnus interrupted. ‘We need to find some people. My son is …’
Maureen rested a hand against the Humvee and leant into the cab. Her weapon swung gently on its strap.
‘We’re not being difficult. When we started trying to get the city back on its feet everyone thought reuniting people was top priority. Then it dawned. Families hadn’t survived, friends were kaput, workmates weren’t there any more. The only people getting together were folk who’d met since the Sweats. Like Billy said, reuniting people wasn’t always a good idea.’ She looked from Stevie to Magnus and back. ‘Have you met anyone you knew from before?’
Magnus said, ‘It’s not like that …’
Stevie threw him a look. ‘No, but …’
Maureen talked over them. ‘I’ve never met a married couple who both survived or a child who still had a parent.’
Stevie took Magnus’s hand in hers.
‘There are new families since the Sweats. Sometimes they need help.’
Magnus pulled his hand free. He fixed his eyes on Maureen’s.
‘I’m looking for my foster son. Someone beat him up. He and his girlfriend went on the run with some strangers they’d just met. A woman called Belle and a bloke who looks like a tough nut. Shuggie’s a naive lad. He’s not been beyond the Orkneys since he was seven years old. He thinks he’s grown-up, but he’s not. I need to make sure he’s okay.’
A shadow crossed Maureen’s face. ‘How old is he?’
‘About fifteen.’
Billy said, ‘Old enough to know his own mind. Old enough for privacy.’
Maureen nodded. ‘It’s hard for kids that survived, but Glasgow’s a small city, smaller than it was. If he’s here and wants to be found, you’ll run into him.’
Magnus held her gaze. ‘They took our daughter with them. Her name’s Evie. She’s eighteen months old.’
Stevie widened her eyes, the way she’d been taught to on a sales training course, back when she was starting out.
‘Shug’s a good lad, but he’s jealous of Evie. The beating unhinged him. We’re worried he might harm her.’
Maureen’s brow puckered. She looked from Magnus to Stevie, as if trying to make her mind up about something. She said, ‘It hits them when they reach puberty, everything we’ve lost. They don’t know how to handle it …’
Billy spoke quietly, too low for the men at the barrier to overhear: ‘Don’t ask me to bend the rules, Mo. It’s not fair.’
The woman straightened up, the rifle back against her chest.
‘Remember Stevo? Maybe if we’d bent the rules he’d still be here, taking his turn holding the clipboard.’
Billy hissed, ‘Don’t fucking start …’
His voice must have carried. One of the men loitering by the barrier called, ‘Everything all right, Mo?’
Maureen threw him a smile. ‘Just getting their details, Davy. They’re from the islands.’
Davy nodded as if that explained everything. Maureen turned her attention back to Billy.
‘If they came this way they’ll be on the register …’ She turned to Magnus and Stevie. ‘The New Corporation are trying to keep track of who’s here, so they can assign them work tasks and the like. It’ll take a while, but we want to get the city back to what it was. The population’s rising.’ Maureen’s smile was proud. ‘It’ll take more than a plague to destroy Glasgow.’ She looked at Magnus. ‘What did you say your boy’s name was?’
‘Shuggie McFall. He was probably travelling with a woman called Belle, a man, a teenage girl called Willow and a toddler called Evie.’
‘Go on, Billy, you can see they’re beside themselves. The wee one’s only eighteen months old.’ The woman gave her colleague a nudge. ‘It’ll do no harm and it might do some good. Maybe they came in when the other team were on.’
Billy’s feet shuffled against the tarmac. He glanced back at the other guards, before meeting Magnus’s eyes.
‘No offence, but for all I know you could be a bounty hunter, a ganger or a whoremaster on the lookout for escapees. I’d like to help but …’
Stevie whispered, ‘Please …’
Maureen’s voice hardened. ‘We don’t have time for foreplay, Billy.’ She rolled her eyes, indicating the other guards, still loitering by the barrier. ‘Davy and Malcy will be over in a minute to find out what’s taking us so long.’
Billy made a face. ‘You’ll get me shot one of these days, Maureen,’ he said but he was already turning the pages pinned to his clipboard, moving quickly now that he had made the decision to help. ‘Four people and a baby, that’d be a red-letter day.’ His face clouded. ‘Sorry, mate. After all that, they’re not on the list.’
Maureen plucked the clipboard from his hands. ‘Give it here.’
Billy said, ‘For fuck’s sake.’ The men by the barrier went for their guns. Billy held up his hands. ‘It’s all right, lads, just Maureen having a carry-on. You know what she’s like.’ He gave her a pointed look. ‘A bloody, silly twat who’ll get us wur heids blown aff one of these days.’
Maureen was flipping back through the surprisingly thick sheaf of pages pinned to the clipboard. She paused and ran a finger down a column. The friendliness fell from her face.
‘What did you say the woman’s name was?’
Magnus tried to catch her eye, but Maureen looked away. He said, ‘Belle.’
Maureen shook her head. ‘There’s no mention of her or the others here.’
Stevie said, ‘Yes, there is. You saw something.’
Maureen passed the clipboard to Billy. ‘Put that away. You’ll not be needing it.’
Billy hissed, ‘I’m meant to write their details down, Mo. Their names and all that.’
‘You don’t need their names. They’ll be heading back the way they came.’
Maureen’s eyes met Stevie’s. ‘My gran was from somewhere on Orkney. She died before I was born. I never went there, but my mum said it was a lovely place. Glasgow’s a good city, but it’s not for everyone, especially since the Sweats. You’d be better going back to your island.’
Magnus’s voice was resolute. ‘I’m not going home without my boy.’
‘Your boy is on his way and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ If Maureen wondered why Magnus did not mention Evie, she gave no sign of it. She cast a sympathetic look at Stevie. ‘Take my advice. Go home and have more babies while you’re still young.’ She glanced down at her own body, the rifle cradled in her arms. ‘That’s what I’d do if I were you.’
Billy touched the older woman’s arm. ‘Mo …’
Stevie said, ‘Who’s head of the city corporation?’
Maureen shook her head. ‘You don’t want to see him. Anyway, Mr Bream’s a busy man.’
Stevie looked towards the barrie
r where the other border guards had each lit up a cigarette. She raised her voice. ‘I’m the elected president of the Orkney Islands. I’m here on a diplomatic visit and I demand to meet the head of your council.’
The guards looked at each other. They took a last drag of their cigarettes, then tossed them to the tarmac and ground them out. There was something comic about the synchronisation of their actions, their perfect timing, but nobody smiled. The guards ambled towards the Humvee.
Maureen shook her head. In a voice too low for the approaching men to hear she whispered, ‘Why the fuck did you have to go and do that?’
Forty-One
They were down in the centre of the city, travelling past neglected tenements and derelict shops, each window a dead soul. Stevie had relinquished control of the Humvee. She was sitting in the back, a hand’s breadth from the border guard Maureen had addressed as Davy. Magnus was in the front passenger seat next to the other guard, Malcy.
Malcy was driving, his rifle hanging by its shoulder strap from a peg beside the window. Maureen had argued that she and Billy should ferry them to the City Chambers, but the two men had held firm. These guards were of a different stamp from the woman and her clipboard-wielding colleague. They had patted Stevie and Magnus down and confiscated the stolen hammer. The guards found it hard to believe it was the only weapon in their possession and had searched them and the Humvee twice.
‘Can’t be too careful.’ Malcy’s eyes watched Stevie in the rear-view mirror. ‘I could tell you tales that would curl your hair.’
They were driving along an empty road, lined either side by four-storey tenements. Sycamores and other greenery had colonised the buildings’ gutters and their facades were water-stained and crumbling. Abandoned shops regarded the street from the ground floors. A few were secured by aluminium shutters, but most sat grimy and abandoned. Windows had been smashed in the panic that had hit at the peak of the Sweats and its aftermath. Premises had been stripped of stock and left to fester. Some walls were blacked by fire. Others graffitied with cryptic messages: TONGS YA BAS, GOVAN YOUNG TEAM 5 ALIVE, BREAM IS THE FISH AND THE TREE AND THE RING.